horror! Could it be Jacques Dollon's body?
Fandor snatched up a stone and flung it furiously among the unclean beasts. They fled. On the ground he could distinguish a mass, a red, formless mass, saturated with congealed blood:
"Assuredly, if the corpse has disappeared, it is there the assassins must have cut it in pieces, that they might carry it more easily, and those vile creatures are in the thick of feasting on the poor victim's remains! … Pouah!"
Fandor moved on, only to discover another pool of blood almost as large, also besieged by rats:
"Evidently I shall find nothing else," thought Fandor: "the corpse no longer exists!"
He continued his advance, determined to find out what this underground way ended in. His lantern was flickering to a finish when he arrived at the end of the sewer and found, as he had foreseen, that its opening had been cut in the steep bank of the Seine:
"That's a bit of luck! I can get out this way instead of having to climb back the way I came, up to the Palais roof and down again!"
It was still night; darkness reigned save on the far horizon, where a faint, whitish line indicated the early dawn of an April day.
Fandor was just asking himself by what gymnastic feat he could regain the quay, and he was leaning over the opening of the sewer, his body bending far forward over the inky waters of the Seine. Before he had time to turn, before he could regain his balance, a brutal blow from behind half stunned him, and a vigorous thrust precipitated his body into the Seine.
V
MOTHER TOULOUCHE AND CRANAJOUR
"Come along, Cranajour! Let's have a sight of what they've given you for the frock coat and the whole outfit!"
The person thus challenged rummaged in the pockets of his old, much-patched and filthy garments, and after interminable fumblings and huntings, finished by extracting a certain number of silver pieces, which he counted over with the greatest care, finally he replied:
"Seventeen francs, Mother Toulouche."
Mother Toulouche showed her impatience:
"It's details I want! How much for the coat? How much for the whole suit? I've got to know, I tell you! I've got to write it all down, and I've got to see how much I've to hand over to each of the owners of the duds! … Try to remember, Cranajour!"
The individual who answered to this odd appellation reflected. After a silence, shrugging his shoulders, he replied:
"I don't know. I can't make myself remember—not anyhow! … And it's a long time since I sold the goods!"
Mother Toulouche shrugged in turn:
"A long time!" she grumbled. "What a wretched job! Why, it's only two hours since—barely that! … It's true," she went on, with a pitying look at the shabby, down-at-heel fellow, who had spread out his seventeen francs on the table, "it's true that you're known not to have two ha'p'orths of memory, and that at the end of an hour you have forgotten what you've done!"
"That's right enough," answered Cranajour.
"Let's have done with it, then," cried Mother Toulouche.
She held out a repulsive-looking specimen of old clothes:
"Be off with you! Go and pawn this academician's cast-off! When the comrades catch a sight of this bit of stuff to the fore, they'll understand they can come without danger! … No cops about the store on the lookout, are there?"
Mother Toulouche took the precaution to advance to the threshold of her store, cast a rapid glance around—not a suspicious person, nor a sign of one to be seen:
"A good thing," muttered she, "but I was sure of it! Those police spies are going to give us some peace for a bit! … Likely the whole lot of them are on this Dollon business! Isn't it so, Cranajour?"
As she retreated into her store again Mother Toulouche knocked against that individual, who had not budged: he had hung over his arm respectfully the miserable bit of stuff that had been styled an academician's robe:
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked she sharply.
"Nothing. … "
"What are you going to do with that?"
Cranajour seemed to reflect:
"Haven't I told you," grumbled Mother Toulouche, "to go and stick it up outside? … Don't say you've gone and forgotten already!"
"No, no!" protested Cranajour, hastening to obey orders.
"What a specimen!" thought Mother Toulouche, whilst counting over the seventeen francs.
Cranajour was a remarkably queer fish, beyond question. How had he got into connection with Mother Toulouche and her intimates? That remained a mystery. One fine day this seedy specimen of humanity was found among the "comrades" exchanging vague remarks with one and another. He stuck to them in all their shifting from this place to that: no one had been able to get out of him what his name was, nor where he came from, for he was afflicted with a memory like a sieve—he could not remember things for two hours together. A feeble-minded, poor sort of fellow, with not a halfpenny's worth of wickedness in him, always ready to do a hand's turn for anyone: to judge by his looks he might have been any age between forty and seventy, for there is nothing like privations and misery to alter the looks of a man! Faced by this queer fish, with a brain like a sieve, they had christened him "Crâne à jour"—and the nickname had stuck to this anonymous individual. Besides, was not Cranajour the most complaisant of fellows, the least exacting of collaborators—always content with what was given him, always willing to do his best!
As to Mother Toulouche; she kept a little shop on the quay of the Clock. The sign over her little store read:
"For the Curiosity Lover."
This alluring title was not justified by anything to be found inside this store, which was nothing but a common pick-up-anything shop: it was a receptacle for a hideous collection of lumber, for old broken furniture, for garments past decent wear, for indescribable odds and ends, where the wreckage of human misery lay huddled cheek by jowl with the beggarly offscourings of Parisian destitution.
Behind the store, whose little front faced the edge of the quay and looked over the Seine, was a sordid back-shop: here the pallet of Mother Toulouche, a kitchen stove out of order, and the overflow of the goods which were crowded out of the store were jumbled up in ill-smelling disorder. This back-shop communicated with the rue de Harlay by a narrow dark passage; thus the lair of old Mother Toulouche had two outlets, nor were they superfluous; in fact, they were indispensable for such as she—ever on the alert to escape the inquisitive attentions of the police, ever receiving visitors of doubtful morals and thoroughly bad reputation.
Mother
